Posted on 08/01/2005 4:48:35 AM PDT by Born Conservative
Sixty years ago, Donald F. Mack was a blonde-haired 19-year-old Navy man playing nickel-a-point pinochle games, eating three square meals a day and thinking often of his days back home in Pennsylvania.
Like most of his fellow 1,196 crewmen cruising the deep blue waters of the western Pacific Ocean aboard the USS Indianapolis, Mr. Mack knew the dangers of being at sea at wartime. He knew Japanese submarines were on the prowl. But when that first torpedo hit at 12:05 a.m. on Monday, July 30, 1945, the lives of the ship’s crew would either end or be changed forever.
Six decades have passed since the sinking of his ship, but the painful memories are very strong. He finally stopped having nightmares,
But he declines to say how long ago. He hasn’t returned to the Pacific Ocean since his transfer from the Pacific Fleet to the Philadelphia Naval Yard in 1946. He won’t go under the water when he goes to the New Jersey shore and to this day he has an ingrained fear of the sharks that killed so many of his shipmates.
Unlike 879 of his crewmates, Mr. Mack would have the chance to go back to civilian life, to marry, to raise a family and to have grandchildren. He said he thinks about the odds he overcame and often questions why he was spared while hundreds of other men never got the chance to say their goodbyes.
The first hit
Just 20 minutes into his overnight watch, Mr. Mack, a bugler 1st class, was on the navigation bridge when the first torpedo hit the ship’s bow.
Twenty seconds later another torpedo hit, this time striking midship. It would be the death blow for the 13-year-old battle cruiser and nearly 300 crewmen who would go down with it. Mr. Mack put his bugle on the bulkhead, grabbed a lifejacket and made his way down to the moonlit ocean 128 feet below. And then he did what the Navy taught men who found themselves in his situation to do.
“I swam as fast as I could and as far as I could,” Mr. Mack said.
When he was far enough away he turned to see the 9,800-ton Portland-class heavy cruiser “standing on its nose, propellers sticking straight up out of the water but still spinning.” Twelve minutes after the first torpedo strike, the ship sank.
For Mr. Mack and 900 others who were lucky enough to make it off the flaming wreckage, the real struggle was about to begin.
“Maybe those guys who didn’t make it off the ship were the real lucky ones,” Mr. Mack said.
Groups of men ranging from a pair to as many as 370 found themselves bobbing in the dark ocean, looking for some leadership and wondering how long it would take for a rescue operation to be dispatched.
Day 1: Hot water
Mr. Mack found himself with about 60 other men, covered in fuel oil and miles from land. When sunlight broke that morning, Mr. Mack could see “nothing but water and heads.” He said the sounds of airplanes could be heard, though none could be seen.
“We tried to visualize being rescued, but we had nothing to use to be spotted. We had no flares, no reflective objects. We had nothing to signal them with,” Mr. Mack said.
The first day was excruciatingly hot and some men were already in their skivvies or less, because they abandoned ship that way. Mr. Mack jumped into the ocean with his dungaree blue shirt and his bell-bottom dungaree blue Navy pants. He also had his black leather shoes and his Navy-issued white socks. By the end of the first day he was down to his shirt and underwear.
It was a good thing he kept his shirt, because as hot as the days were, the nights were just as brutally cold.
“The temperature was beastly in the daytime and freezing cold at night,” Mr. Mack said.
DAY 2: Blood in the water
Mr. Mack sums up the second day with four words: “Then came the sharks.”
The sharks might have been there since the ship went down, but they made themselves known on July 31.
“Fins all around,” Mr. Mack recalled.
It was this day when the men started to lose to the elements. The lack of food or water was catching up to them. The men decided to hitch their lifejackets together to try to keep in a tight formation. By this time, some men were hallucinating, drinking salt water — which made matters worse by causing their tongues to swell — or had bleeding injuries that were resulting in shark attacks.
The mixture of oil and sea water clung to his hair, forced him to keep his eyes nearly shut and penetrated his nose. Though there was still some hope that they’d be rescued, the men were concentrating now on staying alive and avoiding the sharks.
With each passing hour it became apparent that no SOS was sent. Multiple accounts portray this night as one of the most harrowing because it signaled the beginning of aggressive shark attacks.
That night was filled with screams in the distance as sharks attacked man after man. “Every so often you’d hear a scream and you knew there was going to be one less man to be rescued,” Mr. Mack said.
DAY 3: More sharks, bad spuds
The third day got no better in terms of shark attacks, but a potential bright spot floated into the group of what was now about 35 men, including Mr. Mack.
“One of the guys spied a crate of potatoes. They turned out to be rotten and many of the men got real sick. I ate a few and got deathly sick,” Mr. Mack said.
Some were hallucinating so badly that they began to argue with each other. Elsewhere in the ocean, it was reported that some men actually attacked fellow crewmen whom they believed were Japanese. By the end of the day, only 18 men remained with Mr. Mack’s group. The sharks began to attack more frequently.
Mr. Mack said the only thing that got him through the ordeal was prayer and a belief that if God wanted him to live he would.
Bad luck had worked against the men. Because their mission to deliver components of the atomic bomb was so secret, the ship wasn’t searched for when it failed to arrive July 31. In official Naval records it was listed as “overdue.”
But on this day, some luck finally shined on the survivors. A group of men was spotted — thanks to a damaged airplane antenna — floating 80 miles from the initial sinking by Lt. Wilbur C. Gwinn, a Navy pilot on routine anti-submarine patrol in a PV-1 Ventura bomber.
His plane’s antenna had lost its weight and was flapping against the aircraft. Trying to fix it, he opened the hatch to reel it in. Looking down at the ocean he spotted a miles-long streak of oil. He thought it could have been from a Japanese submarine and initially contemplated dropping depth charges. Then he realized there were men in the water.
Lt. Gwinn radioed the military base on Palau, but he was unsure what he was seeing. According to several books written on the rescue operation, he wasn’t sure if the men were American, Japanese or other. Three hours later, a Catalina PB-Y flying boat arrived under the command of Lt. Adrian Marks. The crew dropped life rafts and supplies to the men.
He also radioed the position of the wreckage to other Navy ships, bringing three destroyers and two other vessels to the area.
DAY 4: Salvation!
Rescue operations took place throughout the day. Many of the men in the water were too weak even to pull the cords of life rafts dropped to them.
“That night we saw the ships coming near us and we saw the USS Cecil J. Doyle with its search lights. We knew we were being rescued,” Mr. Mack said.
He and nine other men who remained in his party throughout an agonizing five nights and four days of hell were taken aboard the Cecil J. Doyle.
Once anboard, 93 rescued men were showered, given clean clothes and treated medically. They were fed a tablespoon of sugar water every half hour for the first day. Mr. Mack weighed 190 pounds when he went into the water five days earlier. Now he was 45 pounds lighter and his body was covered with salt ulcers.
Recovery
Mr. Mack was taken to Palau and then to the Naval hospital on Guam for six weeks. By this time, he said, the facts about what had happened were finally coming out and men learned how few of their crewmates survived — only 321.
Four more would die less than a week after the rescue. By the end of 1945, Mr. Mack was stationed at the Philadelphia Naval Yard as a bugler of the watch for funeral details.
In 1946 he was transferred to Bainbridge, Md., where he played in the drum and bugle corps until his discharge in March. He moved back home to the Easton area and got a job at his family’s company, Mack Printing, by the end of 1946. He married his first wife in 1947.
His best man at that wedding was Yeoman 1st Class Victor Buckett, his shipmate on the USS Indianapolis. From 1947 to 1966, he worked as an installer with Bell Telephone.
He was transferred throughout the state — from Easton to Bethlehem to Wilkes-Barre to Scranton to Hazleton and finally to Shamokin. His first wife died during this time but while working in Shamokin he met Dorothy, now his wife of 42 years. He has a 59-year-old daughter, Linda, and a son, David, 57. He has one grandchild and one great-grandchild.
He said he rarely speaks about the sinking of the Indianapolis.
60-YEAR REUNION
A biannual reunion took place last weekend in Indianapolis and about 60 of the 93 living survivors were there. Mr. Mack, who has been to nearly all of the previous ones, was not among them.
He said the reminder of how old he’s getting and how many of his shipmates have died in the past two years would be overwhelming for him. He said he gets newsletters from the survivors’ organization every few months and each one has the names of those men who have died since the last letter.
“We used to lose a few a year. Now it’s a few every couple of months,” Mr. Mack said. “The group gets smaller and smaller. It’s very disheartening.”
At age 79, he is among the youngest living survivors.
According to the survivor organization’s records, 15 have died since the last reunion in July 2003.
Retired in the mountains
Mr. Mack’s Lake Wallenpaupack home doesn’t display many war mementos. Instead it’s a cozy wooden retreat the Macks purchased as a getaway from their Easton home in 1976. When he retired in 1984 from Mack Printing, he and his wife started discussing a move to the Pike County house.
In 1987, the Macks began calling Lake Wallenpaupack their year-around home. He’s bespectacled and gets around with a cane. He walks noticeably hunched over but is in relatively good health.
He forgave the Japanese long ago, calling what transpired 60 years ago a “part of war.”
There are some things he cannot forget. When he’s clicking through the television channels and he comes across anything about about sharks he keeps flipping.
He’s never seen “Jaws.”
He doesn’t have to, he said. He lived it.
The way the Navy scapegoated the commander of that ship was beyond disgusting. Was he ever exonerated? I forget.
God bless this man and his mates. I read a book about the Indianapolis awhile back and marveled at what is only hinted at in this article. I owe too much to ever repay - I can only say 'Thanks, Mr. Mack.'
I always think of this incident when I hear some idiot "expert" say sharks rarely go after humans.
Yeah, that's the book - good read.
Molly, the Captain committed suicide in his old age before any official retractions or apologies.
bump
Ping for later.
(I have more time to read at work than at home!)
Thanks for the extra info.
McVay saved his men's lives!! He should have been honored as a hero!
Not to make light of this tragedy, but there is an entire genteration that never would have known about the Indianapolis had it not been for this part of the Jaws movie script:
Quint: "Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side, chief. It was comin' back, from the island of Tinian Delady, just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb.
Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in twelve minutes.
Didn't see the first shark for about a half an hour. Tiger. Thirteen footer. You know, you know that when you're in the water, chief? You tell by lookin' from the dorsal to the tail.
Well, we didn't know. `Cause our bomb mission had been so secret, no distress signal had been sent. Huh huh. They didn't even list us overdue for a week.
Very first light, chief. The sharks come cruisin'. So we formed ourselves into tight groups. You know it's... kinda like `ol squares in battle like a, you see on a calendar, like the battle of Waterloo. And the idea was, the shark would go for nearest man and then he'd start poundin' and hollerin' and screamin' and sometimes the shark would go away. Sometimes he wouldn't go away.
Sometimes that shark, he looks right into you. Right into your eyes. You know the thing about a shark, he's got...lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eye. When he comes at ya, doesn't seem to be livin'. Until he bites ya and those black eyes roll over white. And then, ah then you hear that terrible high pitch screamin' and the ocean turns red and spite of all the poundin' and the hollerin' they all come in and rip you to pieces.
Y'know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men! I don't know how many sharks, maybe a thousand! I don't know how many men, they averaged six an hour.
On Thursday mornin' chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player, bosom's mate. I thought he was asleep, reached over to wake him up. Bobbed up and down in the water, just like a kinda top. Up ended. Well... he'd been bitten in half below the waist.
Noon the fifth day, Mr. Hooper, a Lockheed Ventura saw us, he swung in low and he saw us. He'd a young pilot, a lot younger than Mr. Hooper, anyway he saw us and come in low. And three hours later a big fat PBY comes down and start to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened? Waitin' for my turn. I'll never put on a lifejacket again.
So, eleven hundred men went in the water, three hundred and sixteen men come out, the sharks ttook the rest, June the 29, 1945. Anyway, we delivered the bomb."
He was exonerated but not before he took his own life over the guilt of the trial and cover up ... the Navy even brought the commander of the sub which sank the Indianapolis as a witness against him
disgraceful
Not one member of the fleet command was ever held accountable ... the ship was overdue and those in 'the know' sat on their hands
their names should be known and well muddied
.
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